Browsed byCategory: Writing

The question I’ve been asked the most frequently since I announced my school plans i — Are you excited??? Yes, super excited. Even more so now that I have my house leased out and a place to live once I get there. In fact, I might even be more excited than I am terrified at this point, which is a huge improvement to a month ago. The second most popular question has undoubtedly been — Are you changing your blog name? I’m…

Alternate titles to this post include: Say Hello to Lauren’s Anxiety! Holding Readers Captive While I Panic About My Life Choices Join Me on a Compelling Journey of Pre-Move Jitters Mostly, I’m excited to quit my job, start school and move halfway across the country on my own… mostly. Still, this is a huge life change that’s happening in a month and a half. Though I’ve done huge moves before (NC to MA, MA to TX), I always had Tim with…

I’ve always been someone who tries to seek out safety. If there’s an option between a wild choice and a safe one, I take the safe one. It’s something I’ve written about before. The relatively safe choices of my past have given me a lot in life. I’ve worked some really interesting jobs in the tech world, and learned a ton of skills I wasn’t introduced to in school. The financial stability my career provided me allowed me to do…

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life. – Stephen King, “On Writing” I’ve made a lot of incorrect assumptions in my life. I assumed any Thoroughbred trained for racing would have easy lead changes. I assumed that if you were nice to people, paid your taxes and showed up to work on time that the universe would protect you from its worst. I also assumed writing a book would be…

I don’t pay close attention to post count, so I missed the official 1,000 mark milestone. In the roughly seven years I’ve had this blog, I’ve written about everything from rat infestations to dog tumors and of course my beloved Simon. Some years I’ve written as many as 300 posts, while others I’ve barely scraped up ten. Mostly though, I’ve been obsessively consistent at bringing you all kinds of horse related content since late 2012. Although at first I didn’t…

I’ve wondered a lot lately why I’m still blogging. If I were to stay true to the horse blog nature of SMTT, this is what I’d have to say about my weekend: Simon got his first true beginner rider when my Mom hopped up for her first time riding a horse solo. He had many confused ears and only did one, “I don’t know what you want so I think the right answer is probably trot away” which I thought…

The only official goal I made for myself this year was to learn to walk in heels like a bad ass. Now I know we’re only halfway through February, but I’m doing exceptionally well with this. I’ve conquered the 2″ work heel, and have future plans to move on to the “Why yes, I will have another glass of Prosecco” heel in the near future. I know, I know… I’m a hero to my generation. That was the only official goal, but…

My dad has this thing he likes to say about buckets. To him, life is a bucket and if you have a lot going on that makes you personally happy and fulfilled, your bucket is full. Sometimes we’ll be talking about someone who seems a bit lost or preoccupied with irrelevant drama. He’ll say, “Her bucket isn’t full,” as an explanation for the behavior. I started this blog in 2010 when I first moved to Austin. In the early days,…

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it. – Toni Morrison I’ve always been a sentimental schmuck, which can also be categorized as a mild hoarder. When I was a little kid, there was always at least one shoebox full of special items stored away under my bed. A vending machine ring from an elementary school crush. A worn piece of wide ruled paper folded up into a fortune teller. A plastic whale I was too old to…

I started this blog… wait for it – when I moved to Texas – in 2010. Originally I wrote about whatever I felt like, which pretty much left it as a personal blog. Those early posts still exist in a sub folder I separated out, but I need to mix them all back together. Anyway, SMTT was not my initial fore into personal blogging. I bought my first domain in 2001, uptonia.com (now a very outdated work portfolio) which I blogged…

I often get asked how someone goes about starting a blog of their own. While I am always happy to answer questions via e-mail and Facebook, I figured this would make a decent blog series. Though I’m not blog ruler of the universe, I have been blogging since 2001 although thankfully this teenage high school blog is long gone from the internet. I also manage our corporate blog and do a lot of online marketing stuff at work, so the people…

Last week, I shared a quick little story about Simon from a jumper lesson because my queue of pre-written blog posts (like this post today, ha) had been emptied. Jen commented that she liked the non-filtered stories about me and my horse, which made me ponder. How much do I filter on here? Honestly, the answer is a lot. When I originally started SMTT, I wanted to be anonymous. That lasted maybe a month… tops. Then about two years later,…